How Toronto Got Addicted to Cars
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- Опубликовано: 27 май 2024
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Toronto is a city with some great potential, and one of the best cities in Canada. But it has a problem: it's addicted to cars. Here's how that happened.
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References & further reading:
History of Toronto
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...
By William Armstrong - This image is available from the Toronto Public Library under the reference number TRL JRR 291, Public Domain, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
By Arthur Cox (1840 - 1917), after Edward Walsh (1766/7 - 1832) - This image is available from the Toronto Public Library under the reference number TRL, X 4-1, Public Domain, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
torontopubliclibrary.typepad....
Toronto Historical Streetcar Photos courtesy of Transit Toronto
Photographer: Richard Glaze
transittoronto.ca/streetcar/4...
Historical Photos of Toronto from the City of Toronto Archives:
www.toronto.ca/city-governmen...
www.blogto.com/city/2011/10/t...
The Yellowbelt - Map TO
www.mapto.ca/maps/2017/3/4/the...
Map of Toronto with the borders of the 1974 - 1998 boroughs indicated
By Lencer - own work, used:OpenStreetMap
created with Greater toronto area map-de.svg by NordNordWest, CC BY-SA 3.0,
commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
The Amalgamation of Toronto
www.mapto.ca/maps/amalgamation
Vote breakdown shows pre-amalgamation split
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toront...
Amalgamation of Toronto
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgam...
TORONTO ELECTION HIGHLIGHTS FAILURE OF AMALGAMATION
www.newgeography.com/content/...
Voters Overwhelmingly Reject Toronto Megacity
www.publicpurpose.com/n-torref...
The Megacity Threat to Toronto: Less Democracy for More Money
www.publicpurpose.com/tor-emp.htm
The fight for TORONTO
archive.macleans.ca/article/1...
Sizing up amalgamation, 20 years on
torontoist.com/2018/01/sizing...
Toronto: Trouble in the megacity, facing a financial crisis in 2010
policyoptions.irpp.org/magazi...
THE FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF AMALGAMATION: THE CASE OF THE CITY OF TORONTO
www.yorku.ca/wp-content/uploa...
Toronto Election 2010 Map
By DrRandomFactor - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,
commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford: I Was Drunk But Never High at Work
www.nbcnews.com/news/world/to...
Pt 1 John Tory on Toronto's Financial Situation (May 16, 2016)
• Pt 1 John Tory on Toro...
Strategic Plan for Cycling in Toronto:
The “Toronto Bike Plan - Shifting Gears” (All Wards)
www.toronto.ca/legdocs/2001/a...
Premier Doug Ford and the politics of spite
www.thestar.com/opinion/star-...
The War on Cars 74. Not Just Bikes with Jason Slaughter
thewaroncars.org/2021/11/30/n...
This video contains photos and video licensed from Getty Images
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Chapters
0:00 Introduction
1:14 The early history of Toronto
2:20 CARS! WE NEED MORE CARS!
2:35 Gotta get rid of those streetcars
4:17 Freeways everywhere
5:27 What was left of Toronto
5:55 Car-dependency in the suburbs
6:52 The MEGACITY
9:21 The worst mayor Toronto ever had
11:30 How the Conservatives f-up cities
13:02 You need to vote. DO IT.
14:25 Conclusion
15:00 My travel problems and NordVPN
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I took your advice on this a few months back, Nord has been great
How can I be sure that you posted this video and not someone using your ip?
I am watching this at 420 views... oh the irony
@@NotJustBikes I subscribed to Nebula and now I am taller, stronger and better looking.
The idea of putting a highway thru a city centre is just insane.
And yet, there's a highway through the centre of basically every major city in North America except ... Vancouver. Any others?
@@NotJustBikes Ottawa's highway through the city is a different can of beans. It mostly replaces a railway track. Still, it's annoying that there isn't a ring road around the city, especially heading to Quebec. Trucks have to navigate through Byward and Sandy Hill! And if we had a ring road, the expansion of the 417 wouldn't have been necessary -- not that it helped! Just one more lane, bro! 😁
It becomes two cities separated by a highway at that point
@@enriquegarciacota3914 It's like a river, except it's depressing and ugly, will degrade your health in several ways just by being vaguely near it, jumping into it means instant death, and it doesn't even transport people efficiently!
Same in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. On a different scale, you can find this in Adelaide as well. I'm guessing it's the same for Perth; never been, but I don't see why this city would be different from all the others. (All these are the main cities in Australia).
Remember, Torontonians: The "Please vote" is not just a platitude. On October 24th, there will be a very real choice between the status quo and Gil Penalosa, a renowned urbanist who fundamentally gets this stuff.
Transportation is political, and the chance to exercise your political views is coming in under a month.
+
@@caramelldansen2204 the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of tyrants
I voted today for Quebec's provincial and my vote is completely irrelevant because I'm in a massively CAQ county. But we have a good mayor at least. At that level I feel like a vote can make a lot more of a difference, zones are smaller.
@@caramelldansen2204 communism is not any better lmao
@@caramelldansen2204 Brave empty words unless you have a plan and an armed militia.
"Urban planning is inherently political." Thank you, Not Just Bikes! Such an obvious statement, yet bizarrely controversial.
In 99% of cases, people who say "keep the politics out" actually mean "keep any politic out that is not mine"
@@steemlenn8797 Same with the phase, "Too political."
Yep. The number of times I had to explain to people that there cannot be an apolitical statement and that refusing to comment on a matter is a political statement in and of itself is genuinely alarming.
I grew up in downtown Toronto. My family did not own a car. We took the bus, subway and street cars everywhere. We would walk to the grocery store up the street. For almost everything else we would shop at Honest Ed's.
It was bliss!
I visited Toronto a few months before Honest Ed's imploded, and my greatest regret was not having time to see it with my own eyes.
RIP Honest Ed's.
Good old Ed's. God do I miss that place.
This is what I do - and I live in a small English village, ie. just using public transport to get around.
You could do that for the most part to this day, I know many people who live downtown that do not own a car. A lot of Toronto's traffic issues aren't residents of Toronto, it is people from the suburbs who have no real way to get downtown.. besides driving.
"Toronto will commit suicide if it plunges the Spadina Expressway into it's heart...our planners are 19th century men with a naive faith in an obsolete technology. In the age of software, Metro planners treat people like hardware. They haven't the faintest interest in the values of neighborhoods or community. Their failure to learn from the mistakes of American cities will be ours too"
Damn. Miss Jacobs did not pull punches.
love it
"What's holding your city back is most likely the politicians, not the planners. Though TRAFFIC ENGINEERS DO A GOOD JOB OF FUCKING THINGS UP, TOO!
-Not Just Bikes, Oct 2022
Also, not pulling punches.
@@praesentius can confirm, am a tamed traffic signal engineer, albeit in the UK.
Even with all its issues, even though I was living in a car dependant suburb in etobicoke it still had the best transit of anywhere I have lived in ontario. It was a culture shock moving out of toronto to the niagara region let me tell you. I had never even wanted to own a car and I was forced into because the transit was so abyssmal
Oh yeah, for sure. When I moved to Toronto from London (fake), it was like a whole new world of transit. I thought it was amazing.
Little did I know how much better it could be outside of Canada.
But ultimately, this is what I hate about Toronto: it's good, but it could be *so much better* with just a few small changes. But those changes would involve restricting car traffic a little bit.
@@NotJustBikes Do you have recommendations for what regions to look at for living without a car in Toronto? I grew up in one of the suburbs (Thornhill, the entire city is a suburb), and want to find a place where I don't need a car. I looked at Riverdale and loved the area, but the problem is that it is so pricey, wanted to see if you had other suggested areas to widen the search net.
Yeah, seems like every time you talk about improving and expanding public transit, someone somewhere is like “but what about the cars?!” Usually it’s a politician. Here in California, it’s impossible to get money for public transit without it being tied to money for road widening and other “fix the bottleneck” BS projects. We’re also the state that complains about spending $100 billion on a bullet train but doesn’t even bat an eyelash when you spend the same amount of money to widen 30 miles of freeway. Where are all of those “budget hawks” then?!
I live in St Catherines, Niagara, and it's sooo challenging to live here without a car
@@Alex-Shulman Waterloo is doable.
Not only calling it the SkyDome, but editing in a SkyDome logo. Beautiful.
What are you talking about? It's always been called the SkyDome and that is a 100% unaltered image. 😂
Has big "Sears Tower" energy.
I heard of a stray dog in turkey that rides the bus train and ferry and I’m like wow this dog has better access to transit than me here in America
As someone who moved to Toronto in 2010, photos of city from the 60s to 90s are chilling
It is astonishing how much Toronto has changed in the past few decades. Even when I first moved there in 2000, many people thought I was crazy to live downtown. I was at Richmond and Sherbourne, renting an apartment in a new condo, and it was NOT a desirable place to live at all, so rent was pretty cheap. Now prices are insane.
Same team. So much change in the last 10 years. Hopefully we can ramp it up.
@@NotJustBikes You have that right. My 27 year old son just moved in with a couple of friends and rented a condo in a historic building at Queen and River (basically Regent Park for those who live in TO). The rent is $4800/month!
@@NotJustBikes Roughly my hood (Adelaide and Jarvis) still not very desirable, but a LOT more expensive and the gentrification has barely begun.
@@NotJustBikes sherbourne is still crack/heroin central
The condo tower/single family home insane juxtaposition of Toronto planning always gets me. Its pretty much the only place in North America where that's so common place everywhere in the metro area.
Yeah, it's not hard to get that footage. I have it from dozens of different spots in the city.
Vancouver would like a word with you.
Look up Burnaby in metro Vancouver,
There's some of that in Atlanta. I lived in a neighborhood in Buckhead that looked for all the world like the suburbs: single-family homes with driveways and two-car garages, but with highrise office towers practically in the backyard.
@@georgedaole-wellman3950 only place where I've been in the US, my host address was in Buckhead :)
As someone who has to drive into and around Toronto for specialist medical checkups, I'm gonna enjoy listening to you tear into the city's transportation infrastructure. The city is so ungodly stressful to drive in as an outsider that I have the Jazz station saved in my car because it's the only genuinely calming noise available.
@@pex3 uhm it isn't the walkers and cyclists that make driving in Toronto stressful...
@@pex3 stressed and alert are not exactly the same thing
@@pex3 Dragon Mountain Fanboy gets it; it's not the pedestrians, bikes, and public transit that are the problem, it's exclusively the car traffic. Pedestrians and bikes add to the stress only because they are easily hidden within the endless sea of bumper-to-bumper traffic, plus the fact nobody on the highways has any courtesy for other drivers. I was nearly forced into a concrete median trying to get to an on-ramp because the cars beside me simply refused to make room and I could not stop without dangerously impeding traffic.
I sent your last video to my city social media accounts, they made a point to tell me the administration and the planning department saw the video. You're doing the lords work.
Nice!
I'm literally on a train home from a weekend visit to Toronto and am excited to see how you break this city down. There was a lot to like, but after spending a lot of time in NYC and visiting some European cities, "so close to great yet so far" was my main takeaway.
That's absolutely correct. Some cities in North America suck and you don't care. Toronto is a city that _could be so great_ but it isn't, and that's infuriating.
@@NotJustBikes it is a great city. Sure compared to European cities it's worse in public transit no doubt and could be so much better but that doesn't mean it's not great
For North America it's great. For world wide it's decent and getting better
Lol as bad at Toronto is transit wise compared to some European cities it’s definitely better than NYC. Are you implying the opposite?
@@rollingthunderinho the bike and metro network are objectively inferior
I worked in Missisauga, a Toronto suburb, and it was the most wretched place to walk to go eat or do anything at all. At the time, I lived in Montreal, and the company I worked at was making me fly and rent a hotel every week. These few months must have made me emit more carbon than I will in the rest of my life.
Now I live in Strasbourg, France, and bike everywhere. It's not perfect, but it's much better than Montreal.
Congrats on getting out!
You poor bastard. That's where I grew up in my teen years. Every time I wanted to visit my friends I would have to plan it out and ask my mom to drive me several miles to get to their place. And these were friends who went to the same school as me! Mississauga is no fun for kids/teenagers and neither is any other suburb.
When I was in high-school in scarborough, my then girlfriend moved to mississauga. I took the ttc to visit her and once I got to mississauga I realized I was basically stranded after a 3 hrs journey. The lack of bus service in mississauga compared to scarborough was shocking
Hazel McCallion, the mayor responsible for the dystopian mess that is Mississauga is regarded by many as a secular saint.
Doug Ford underfunding transit, education, and healthcare to build a fucking highway through the Greenbelt that even traffic engineers say is fucking useless is the epitomy of what this video spoke of. Anyways, vote Gil Penalosa for mayor. He's an internationally recognized urbanist activist with a detailed plan to end car-addiction in Toronto and dismantle the yellow belt to build housing and liveable communities. Speaking of the yellow belt and Greenbelt, the Greenbelt was created to make the GTA densify, but then the yellow belt was never taken out of the zoning code; and now we have a national housing crisis.
That part sucks about North American Conservatives they hate public transport and build dumb Highways for no reason.
As a Euro kid back in the 2000's, I walked into my doom multiple times in Toronto. Man I'm happy to be walking all over European cities again.
I recently did a coast-to-coast Canada/USA road trip with some folding e-bikes in tow, and got to experience a lot of both the biking and car infrastructure in the major Canadian and American cities along the route. Downtown Toronto has a very respectable bike lanes, and even the "streetcar suburb" neighbourhoods are not too bad either, mainly due to less traffic on the roads. In comparison, driving in the GTA is an absolute nightmare, massive urban freeways with rapid interchanges with hyper-aggressive drivers (myself included). Driving cross-country is fairly pleasant and non-confrontational, but the second I got into the GTA I became stressed and wanted to get out of the car as fast as possible, you drive fast over huge distances and yet you progress very slowly - probably because the city sprawled in order to accommodate cars. Driving in Toronto is not even a good experience, and quite frankly Ontario (and Quebec) drivers are some of the worst I've encountered after driving across the entirety of Canada and the USA - so the fixation on car-centric design is pretty nonsensical, it's an objectively bad transportation experience.
Toronto is proof that designing only for cars makes it worse for drivers. Driving in the GTA absolutely sucks. Merging from the 401 East to the 427 South is basically taking your life into your hands.
@@spindriftdrinker greater toronto area
Chicago is better :)
@@hellfreezer3037 Saying Chicago is better (and it is) isn't saying much.
@@NotJustBikes you got it right. We call it the basketweave. My family and I got in a write-off 401W to 427S 15 years ago.
As someone who grew up in Bowmanville, and thus Toronto was our occasional stomping grounds in the 70s-90s, this was a treat to watch. The reactions of Vancouver & Montreal, the SKYDOME (forever!) edit, Union always under construction, one more lane, and the “megacity.” And seeing the lot where the Princess of Wales theatre now stands!
Humour and nostalgia aside, this was fascinating to learn the history of the car-ification of Toronto. So much of it felt so familiar; I’ve never known any Toronto other than the car-ified version. So by default it feels like that’s how it must have always been. To see how it had succumb to the same transit mistakes of other North American cities (DVP and Gardner, I’m looking at you), and then to learn the $%*!@! reason behind the amalgamation for such petty anti-democratic “reasons” is at first unfortunate and then becoming downright angering. (And, Jane Jacobs, damn, what a powerful writer/speaker!)
I get the sense there is some better understanding and planning that’s starting to take hold in Toronto, both with the design of the infill of all those downtown parking lots as well as with the new transit projects. I hope my sense is right, and I’m looking forward to seeing your video on that, and on how those still in the region can advocate for something better than the continual suburban ennui feeding forever into the Don Valley parking lot.
One more reason I'm disliking Conservative politicians. 👎 Stopped voting them since 45 took a dump on our Democracy.
based skydome
Good video as always, though I am less sad about losing transit city! Toronto would be so much better if it had even 20% less cars in it. Edit: Now that I think about it, we built most of the decent stuff in transit city anyways like Eglinton and Finch - albeit worse than we could have!
Aww, I liked Transit City. :(
@@NotJustBikes it was in itself a political plan, a tram for every ward! Even where it should have been a subway like Eglinton and Don Mills. Theres a whole video to be made about transit and governance . . . . we could benefit from a more regional approach - of course, one where the region also had to be less car centric . . .
@@gupadre8255 Nahh, it does make sense. The transit city was like: "Let's combine joureys that would be best served by regional rail with those for metro and use trams to serve it! Why? Cause...they look cool!
I feel like the attempt to dilute the urbanism of the old City of Toronto into the suburban megacity might soon be overcome by the rapid intensification happening across the 'megacity' and even in the 905 suburbs. Enough of North York. Scarborough, Etobicoke are going to be highrise condo neighbourhoods that a majority of wards might come around to low-car thinking. You even see it now, most often there are only 2-3 councilors of 25 that vote in the anti 'war on cars' culture war. There is a decent squishy middle but I feel like the majority of council is just afraid of being bold, including our mayor. They are generally sympathetic to reducing car-orientation, just insist on glacial incrementalism. Toronto will need to dragged kicking and screaming to become less car oriented by sheer inertia.
@@andrew20146 Not to mention Canada is in the midst of the worst housing crisis ever. Homelessness is way up and so many more people are underhoused. We're seeing our quality of life decline in real time and cost of living skyrocket.
Been trying to learn how to attend the Toronto public city council meetings to give them a piece of my mind. Thank you Jason for teaching me, but now it's time to act.
Absolutely love that you're not beating around the bush with politics here, it's important
Edit: a reminder that municipal elections all across Ontario are happening THIS MONTH. If you are from Ontario, take some time to read up on your local cantidades for councillor, school trustee, and (possibly) mayor, and make sure you are registered to vote!!!
Yes. Progressives are way too quick to talk about "issues and policy" without coming out and explicitly saying that certain politicians and parties support or oppose them.
You can't seriously be interested in fighting climate change and many other issues while embracing the conservative politicians that exist in Canada and we need to say that OUT LOUD, so that people can't just keep pretending they are centrists.
@@rileynicholson2322 I use this argument with a lot of conservatives in the US. If someone says they support gay rights but vote for republicans, I tell them they don't actually support gay rights. Same for every other issue they "agree" with, but then turn their back on for whatever reason.
I will immediately go out and vote for whichever party wants to Legalize machine guns AND build bike lanes.
Change for the better doesn't just happen. You've got to vote for the better people. Superman said he was for "Truth, justice and the American Way", which I take to mean democracy (rather than American Imperialism or oligarchies.)
Politics comes from the greek word for “city”.
It literally meant “the affairs of the city” or “city planning”!
I'm visiting my mother in Ontario right now, and I am struck by just how dangerously impatient and indifferent to human life the drivers are. I grew up in Canada, but I only started driving after moving to the U.S.
I have driven all over the U.S; in every major city in Florida, and every state along the northern border and around the great lakes, and I have never felt so close to a collision as I have in the couple of days I've been here in Ontario. It is crazy, these people drive like they want you dead.
I lived in Toronto for 6 years, during the Rob debacle. It was SOOO infuriating when he unilaterally cancelled Transit City, and then later (a year-ish?) it came out that he had no authority to cancel it, and the city counsel just shrugged their shoulders and went along with it. No repercussions, no re-instating contracts, nothing. It was a total gong show.
Hi there, just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your videos. I am actually a current urban planning student in Toronto and watching your videos have really helped me feel like I’m on the right track in life. I really hope to be able to address the issues that you bring up as I feel strongly about the connection and car dependency problem we face here in Toronto. Thank you so much for the work you do!
I grew up in a previous streetcar suburb on the western border of Cleveland, OH and this video resonates so deeply for me. Now I live in Berlin, Germany, I don't drive, and I can't imagine ever being able to ever move back, no matter how much I miss it, and these issues are a big reason why. And I really appreciate your tone in this video - hits right where I'm at on this issue too.
I really can empathise! Grew up in Germany, spent a few years in The Netherlands and started appreciating its cycling infrastructure so much I was assuming that I could never move back . However realising that in Northern America things are worse - and with the pandemic having induced positive changes for cycling infrastructure in Germany with activisim being strong, I am going to move back to Germany.
Honestly as Toronto born and raised, every point here struck true! I was 14 when Rob Ford was elected and immediately cancelled Transit City, which would have shortened my commute to school in North Scarborough. Watching city council wrestle back the Eglinton LRT was a headache, and that bickering is the whole reason the Scarborough RT doesn't have a replacement before it closes next year.
Wasted potential is definitely a good way to sum it up. On the plus side, You can survive car free in the city, and yes even in the yellow belt suburbs, because where the transit a bike lanes really break down is crossing Steeles/427/Rouge River into the 905 :P
You should do some research on the history of the Hamilton LRT, it's been incredibly interesting to watch politically. People in the suburbs literally think this project will destroy the fabric of the city, when it's cars that caused Hamilton's decline in the first place! Now half of downtown has been demolished for parking lots and half the city screams bloody mary when we try to reverse it. But Hamilton is starting to set a good example by removing car lanes and adding transit signals at major intersections, despite huge public backlash.
Keep on pushing back, Hamilton. F*ck cars
As a planning student who studies in Hamilton i can confidently say progress is happening. Converting king street back to two-way traffic is crucial.
As a long time resident, amalgamation and before that the conversion to OW streets through downtown, killed the downtown. I would avoid downtown like the plague due to the gangs and crime. And now it's making a comback and I feel relatively safe walking down there and seeing all the new commercialand residential uses going in. Can't wait for the LRT and to see Main St converted back to 2-way traffic. Now if only Barton St and Cannon can be shaved and paved......
@@erins9271 how do one ways affect the downtown? A comment above mentioned it’s good a street in Hamilton becoming two way again but I don’t understand the importance
@@evanfried5721 OW streets, especially without sufficient traffic calming measures are in effect highways. Think of the QEW, 401, 427 or any highway with speeds at 100km; they are divided one way travel. Now, granted Main and King St are not 100km however, when a driver doesn't have to be aware of oncoming traffic, the streets are so wide they are practically stroads to pedestrians and the traffic lights are timed to just move cars to and from the highway , it is unpleasant to walk and drivers don't notice businesses. The goal is to get through town as quickly as possible. It isn't unusual to see people rush and race from light to light. We literally have people drag racing down Main and King Sts.
So many towns and cities are a dozen or so people in positions of authority or influence away from making incredible strides in livability. Toronto is a great example, and I hope everyone watching from North America can see their own places and opportunities reflected here.
So true! I've been bothering my city council people to let them know that my small city could be so much better.
Greater Manchester in the UK is currently trying to revolutionise its transport network and the developments so far have been very encouraging. It’s great to see that some city regions are making progress, especially in the UK, as we are far too dependant on cars anywhere outside of London.
The roads in manchester are so badly designed. Feels like wherever I go I'm waiting at traffic lights to cross 4 lanes of traffic.
@@lowcostfish Precisely why they’re trying to create a ‘London style’ public transportation network whilst improving cycling infrastructure and safety for pedestrians so that people get out of their cars.
Manchester wasn't designed for cars at all.
That goes for majority of UK cities. They were all designed for foot and light goods traffic along side some transit.
With trams being replaced by trolley busses in the 1920's before all trolley busses were replaced with regents in the 50's and 60's. Andy is quite a decent chap.
I remember rush hour in Toronto when I visited a few years back. We decided to hop on a tram/streetcar, assuming the busses would be stuck in traffic. Only to find out the those where just as stuck... Fixing that would make a big difference.
Look up the king street priority corridor. It’s a great streetcar success story.
New Yorker here: great video! I visited Toronto in 2017 with a friend. We never drove or took a taxi; we used the local bike-sharing service and the trams to get all over the city. I remember the bike lanes being quite pitiful, with absolutely nothing separating us from downtown traffic, but overall it was a very cathartic experience being able to bike to wherever we needed to go. Biking along the waterfront is an experience that I'll never forget.
“Urban planning is inherently political” Absolutely, unforgettably true!
I have found this channel and watched almost all the videos in the time between the last upload and now, first time watching a new video! I love the informative and educational content, keep up the amazing work NJB!
Thanks!
Thank you. I want everyone that pumps up TO to watch this. I left after only a brief period. These issues were too hard to ignore, especially when you've lived in less car-focused cities.
Toronto is a decent city, but I hate it _so_ much because it's very clearly not able to live up to its potential. A lot of people who love it have just never lived anywhere better, though. I thought it was the best when I moved there from London, Ontario, but that's because I didn't know how much better a city could be.
Same. I lived there for less than a year. I'm sooooo much happier in Montreal
@@NotJustBikes I love Quebec City but it fails to live to it's potential because of this ring of car dependancy that surrounds the center of the city. It is literally being choked by it's suburbs. The Tramway saga is such an example of suburbs fighting tooth and nail to keep a statu quo that is not even working for them.
@@kateb2643 Isn't Montreal worse for transit?
@@lucky247365 Montreal is arguably much better for transit then Toronto. Montreal was actually a larger city before the widespread adoption of the automobile. It was once Canada’s largest city. It’s old housing stock is also mostly walk-up apartments, even more dense then Toronto’s old “streetcar suburbs”. So when they built the Metro it was able to serve a lot of the city quite well. It’s much much cheaper to live in a walkable Montreal neighborhood then a Toronto one. Now Montreal has been asleep at the wheel for transit for a long time but the big new project is the REM. This will mostly serve the suburbs but will also help the inner part of the city. Stupidly the second REM, REM de l'Est, was canceled due to NIMBYs. But I’m hoping when the first phase of the REM opens soon, it will show people what they are missing. I think what people miss understand about Toronto and Montreal is that Toronto is surrounded on all sides by an ungodly mass of suburban cities and towns. These not only batter Toronto with car traffic, but also direct provincial politics to make the situation worse in the city for anyone without a car. Montreal has its suburban neighbours of course, but it’s on a much smaller scale. Even though transit expansion has been delayed decades, its going ahead now and it’s even doing a decent job at connecting the suburbs. Connecting the entire GTA is pretty much a impossible task unless some dense urban cores are established.
Your video quality just keeps getting better and better, loving every episode!
Thanks!
I am reading Jane Jacob's book "The Life and Death of Great American Cities". It's an interesting read! She's a really good author and had some great ideas
Such a perfectly timed video! I've lived in Finland my whole life, but just spent 10 days in the Toronto metropolitan area with my partner who's from around there. Being driven through the city on 401 for multiple hours on multiple days left me lots of time to look stuff up about the highways and city itself. It's... dreadful. Even more so when you hit the 407 tolls rabbithole.
I live in a city with people that only amount to 50% of the number of cars that use the 401 every. Single. Day. So to say the least, me and my blood pressure were both happy to come back home to rush hour traffic in Helsinki. Such a peaceful city in comparison.
Rush hour traffic on the 401 was... an experience. First of all, many parts of the highway are in rough condition, so both lanes on the edges of the road often have surface damage that makes it scary to drive on. Just on the way to the airport we saw 2 chain crashes and just barely dodged one rapidly spinning metal bumper. On good sections you could drive 60km/h, but often you would be standing still and tugging slowly along in between cargo trucks big enough to be illegal in my country and pickup trucks so massive I wouldn't be able to reach the window while standing next to the car.
They just built a fresh new tramline system in my town and are still developing it. Building the thing faced a lot of backlash but they made it anyway, and it's working great with more development planned for at least 5 years ahead.
I don't really have a point here. Just felt like expressing myself after hearing just why Toronto is like that. Great video and I'll be checking out the rest of the channel!
Thanks NJB, I've always had a interest in city design and transit. I love the level of detail you go into yet, you have a great overall message.
Thanks so much!
I'm from Toronto and this video really spoke to me. I grew up here in the 90's when downtown was very much a city of parkinglots. That photo of massive sprawling parking lots next to Roy Thompson Hall was really jarring.
I am happy to say in the last 10 years things have gotten much better, slowly, but surely. And I mean very slowly... 12 years for the Eglinton line? The Ontario Line should open in the 2030s if we're lucky. I'm happy to see a lot of bike lanes in the city center, especially along University, Bloor, and Distillery. And guess what - removing lanes from cars did not impact traffic at all. Who would have thought lmao.
There's a good channel called RM Transit who talks a lot about the future development of Toronto. He's an urbanist through-and-through
Watching your videos about the US and Canada makes me grateful for the half-assed and crumbling bike infrastructure in Edinburgh, because at least crossing the street won't kill me, it's not an hour's walk to the nearest supermarket, and buses come more regularly than twice a day. You guys really have it rough. Please vote and good luck!
I can see Leith Walk shying away at this comment just now
I live in the Toronto Suburb and let me tell you how many arguments I’ve had with my family over this. For them they feel the car centric is no problem. It allows us to live far from the city where everything is quiet and comfortable. When they see an apartment they see nothing more than a rise in crime and corrupt capitalists trying to maximize profits on a piece of land. They see no value in transit because it’s going to “take hours” just to get places without a car. A car you’re safe, comfortable and with people you know. On a train or bus, that’s not the case. Someone help me break this argument down cuz I can’t anymore
First of all the only reason the city is as loud as it is is because of cars. Other forms of transportation don't have nearly the noise footprint. Apartments don't have to be massive, cramped high rises, it's just that there are only a few places that are actually zoned for apartments and so people try to make as much use of it as possible. Public transportation is often faster than cars. Especially when cities are denser because of better zoning laws I don't have any stats, and I suggest looking it up, but I assume that riding a bus with 30 other people is safer than piloting a massive metal and plastic box at upwards of 70 km/h in city limits. Trains and buses can be more comfortable, and there are some great examples of this abroad, that you could probably show your family.
I just kinda went through and gave you what I would have said. it's a bit rambly, but I hope it helped nonetheless! Cheers.
Well first of all, most cities in the Netherlands are already really quiet because of the lack of many cars. I don’t see how appartements cause crime rise, it certainly is not the case in the Netherlands. Apartments also allow people who don’t earn a massive salary to have their own place and I honestly think that building single family homes everywhere will drive up the price of land (due to shortage). So ironically I’d say single family homes are because of corrupt capitalists.
Being forced to own a car to go anywhere sucks and is a big restriction of freedom and travel times of public transit a pretty decent if you *build good infrastructure*.
I’ve driven cars plenty of times where I felt unsafe because assholes use their own car to try and run you of the road or cause accidents, in many cases I am glad to not have to deal with that
To add to it: it is not financially viable to maintain suburbs
As someone in the tabarnak province, I appreciate the shout out
Toronto very recently legalized the construction of up to 5 unit housing city-wide, effectively abolishing the yellow belt, which is a huge step in the right direction. In addition to that the Ontario Line is in the process of being constructed, the streetcar system will be expanded into the newly developed Portlands, Lines 5 and 6 are set to open soon and Dundas Street is being looked at as a potential transit mall like King Street. As you have already covered, GO Expansion is well underway to give S-Bahn like frequencies to the network, and College Street recently got new elevated (Dutch style?) bike lanes along the downtown stretch.
All this is to say, there is a lot of optimism to be had with Toronto's near future. The Toronto by-election (after Tory's uhhh yk) is mostly led by progressive candidates as well. Looking forward to any future videos on Toronto and its hopeful improvement.
I am cautiously optimistic about Toronto. I've seen a lot of great projects totally fall apart though (I watched Rob Ford get elected and systematically tear out bike lanes), so when it comes to Toronto, I don't believe it until it happens. Things do look like they're trending up though!
Downtown Toronto is pretty neat. Last time I went there I took the subway, walked through an underground plaza, went to above-ground pedestrian walkways connecting buildings... I didn't need to cross any roads between reaching the first subway station and getting to my final destination. Everything is really close to a subway, tram or bus stop.
Great video as always. Im from Uruguay, and although we have little population, Montevideo (the capital city) is completely car dependant. And i think that’s the same problem in most south americans capital cities. I’ve been in Toronto for a month and i can say you have a really good public transportation system, but i agree with you that it has the potential for it to be even better. Being stucked in the 401 was a new experience for me, and it completely sucked!!
It's also unfortunate that most people that live in the surrounding cities all want to live in Toronto because of the ease of travel. The roads in my neighborhood in Mississauga haven't changed in 20 years!
I lived in Toronto in the late 1980s. I never owned a car. I lived in North York and took a bus to work. I would take a train to SkyDome to watch baseball. The only time I had a car is when a relative from New Zealand came to visit and we drove to places like Niagara Falls. It is sad to see such a great city become more and more like Los Angeles.
+1 for the "Tabarnak" over Montréal at the start of the video 😆
"moat of piss" is why you and your channel are so great!!!
'Addiction' is a very useful metaphor for automobile dependence. There is so much infrastructure, often with 100-year lifespans, committed on the basis of short-term trends of technology, oil prices, or population density, and mistakes are frightfully expensive, if not outright impossible, to correct.
Thank you for the work you put in this, great work NJB!!
As a Torontonian, thank you. I will say though that Transit has gotten much better, and we're now investing in massive Transit mega projects that will hopefully get Toronto moving again.
You should cover Montreal, a great example of a city trending solidly in the right direction with a city council that actively is engaged with a semi-war on cars. Great bike lanes, lovely parking lot transformations, pedestrian streets, and transit.
montreal is heaven
The issue with Montreal's transit build out is that it's not being done holistically. There's gonna be completely unnecessary gaps in service between the Metro, REM and trains. For example, there's gonna be a shuttle bus between Bois-Franc on the REM and Côte-Vertu on the metro. Just a complete failure of foresight.
This is a video I feel in my bones. I've lived in Toronto for the last 12 years and I complain vehemently at least 6 times a year about the shitty job Toronto has done serving the people that actually live here. I also get my hackles up any time some car driver gets pissy that ActiveTO manages to make this city better for anyone else.
It hurts my heart some days because I love so much about this city, but after living in London (real), Japan, and parts of Europe, where a city isn't designed for the 5% of people in cars, Toronto's addiction to cars is infuriating.
I also can't fucking believe that asshole John Tory is mayor of the city he helped screw over with his PC megacity project. What a bastard.
Tell everyone you know to vote for Gil. This is why I am a supporter for things like mandatory voting. Especially on a municipal level, people just don’t care and so the only ones voting are retired grumpy people. And typically those people just want to keep things the same. We could have such a better mayor if only people voted one in. But again, they don’t care or just want the current thing to keep going. It’s sad.
@@pepperpillow I'd really love if they allowed everyone to vote who lived in the city. My partner will be voting but I can't as I'm not a citizen yet 🤷♀️ but we did buy a sign for the challenger in our district cause she actually wants bike lanes. Weston just did a huge revamp and didn't include bike lanes! I was so pissed. Glad to support anyone who'll make this city better to live in.
I recently moved to Toronto from London (real). I live 8 km North of line 2, west end. My god, it's such a frustrating and annoying experience! It's insane how urban planning policies affect people's ability to live car-free and travel reliably. My transit time is usually around 45+ minutes, often 60+ or even 80+ minutes, when considering door-to-door time. Delayed busses (due to traffic), randomly inflated distances due to mandatory parking and big-ass stroads everywhere, missed connections and extended wait times... I simply can't unsee how terrible my daily life is due to this historic obsession with cars.
Oh my goodness! The parallels to Toledo Ohio are scary. The City also exapnded its geography through annexation of the burbs in the 70s AND had a wacky mayor who wanted all the deaf residents to move out by the local airport. 😞
I grew up a 3 minute walk from a subway station on a quarter-acre lot. A few homes down, there's a 35 storey condo tower. Craziness.
Yup, my wife did as well. And it's still all single family homes there, with huge condo towers a few hundred metres away.
Yup, that's the Willowdale nightmare just north of the Yonge St & 401 junction. And the planners (both the land-use and transportation variants) believe they're winning by shunting north-south Yonge St vehicle flow (from the satellite cities up north) one block east and west on to our new "race-tracks" Beecroft and Doris Aves. Carz everywhere!
Amazing video. Rob Ford...wow! I do find it difficult to imagine Toronto traffic could be nearly as bad as Los Angeles, though.
Yooo!! Thank you so much for the content. And I really want to appreciate what yiru channel has done to bring more stress in the importance of urban planning in cities.
Not to mention you also go out of your way to shout out and support similar channels.
Just subscribed to RM Transit yesterday
I live in Minneapolis, I feel like we’re going through a lot of the same issues but on a smaller scale. Our city’s history parallels Toronto’s pretty well
I recently went to Montréal and, while not European, was impressed by the urbanism in the core. I wonder how it compares to Toronto and if Montréal's agglomeration in 2002 had the same motives/effect.
I come from the real London and married a girl from Brantford Ontario. I've travelled all over Europe and been to Toronto multiple times and also Fake London. Toronto is so far the best place I've seen in Ontario for transit by far, but as you said, it's still got a long way to go to get up to European levels. Nevertheless, I am encouraged by all the projects going on there. There is some hope at least.
Fantastic video! This channel really is one of the most important things on youtube.
Thank you for putting a spotlight on urban planning in Toronto. Much appreciated!!
One of the city council candidates in my area is running on a platform of "no more lane reductions on Yonge St". I have no words.
Thanks for this video, I'll be sharing it with anyone who lives in Toronto and will listen.
As someone who lives off Yonge, honestly fuck that, I want zero cars in my neighborhood, and a return to 15 minute or better service on the 97.
This video really hits close to home, as I live at the Scarborough/Pickering border. While I am primarily a driver, my commute to work is only 5 minutes so it's usually no big deal. However, I don't like driving to downtown Toronto, and dreaded the idea of doing that to go to my cousin's wedding last weekend due to potentially needing more cars to bring more people. Luckily, that wasn't necessary, so I solo travelled via GO train, leading to a less stressful and more enjoyable time getting there.
That leads to my next point. While it still gets memed on for all its flaws, I'm still thankful that we still have a pretty decent Toronto transit system.
Loved the "Precision F-Strike" you put in there!
Watching this during my layover in Toronto!
I live in Durham region and I love heading into Toronto whenever I can because compared to where I live in Ajax, I can actually walk places! It feels nice to be able to get around without the need of a car. Ajax was developed in the 40s and 50s post ww2 so right from the get go it was entirely designed to be car dependent and full of strip plazas and 4 lane “streets” with incredibly dangerous intersections. I wish it could get better but it’s literally in the design of the town to work against pedestrians.
the amalgamation of Hamilton, just down the street from Toronto, was a similarly ridiculous and unfortunate event that played out more or less the same way. Though, because much of the amalgamated city land was not yet developed, it may actually turn out beneficial with the new green space and farmland protections that council is trying to put in place. Had the city not amalgamated when it did (and people not advocated for ending suburban sprawl), these areas around the city probably would have continued to be rapidly suburbanized.
Thanks for this! Your channel inspired me to join Cycle Toronto and get active here in hogtown. My ride is the Danforth from Main to Bay each day. We have separated bike lanes now. Yay.
Good! Cycle Toronto are great.
I’d love to see you analyze other cities too
Thanks NJB!
Excellent analysis as always.🌟 Btw, some of us cranky old timers are very much on the left! But then we tend to live in “orange” neighbourhoods. (Orange is the colour of my métro line… and of the left in Canada.)🍊😉
Megacity: The irony was that it was the other way around in Montreal. The goal was to make wealthy suburbs to finally pay their fair share of the central city’s expenses. And of course it was a (reddish then) Tory (Charest) who scuttled it. At least Toronto has relatively improving regional rail. The problem with Montreal is that it’s not the capital of Quebec, a huge advantage for Toronto. Necessary transit projects in Montreal are stalled (Blue line) or cheapened (Mascouche and Pie-IX lines) by the car addicts in the rest of the province (especially Quebec City). Or we get the REM whose business plan forces it to be profitable and thus “palatable.”
It's a shame coz Quebec could be a good city too, there is already a nice city center, but public transport are a joke
Everyone in Totonto (and all across Canada and the US) needs to see this! It explains so much.
I saw the thumbnail and my reaction was kinda just a feeling of depression… then I watched the video and had a great time. Really good video as always!
At the start of the video I didn’t think you’d touch on the Ford issue, especially Dougie, but you did and you DOUBLED DOWN on it and it makes me so happy. It was perfect.
Another amazing video Jason, thanks so much for your hard work making high quality videos! I feel the same way about Portland, Oregon. It could be so much better, yet continues to not crack down on cars nearly as much as it should to truly be a safe urbanist city.
I live in a suburb of about 80,000 and if I ever want to go for a walk, I have to drive to the next town over. Its downtown is only 8 blocks but it’s better than where I live now. Too bad there’s no housing anymore in that downtown.
Love the video, I'd love to see something like this about Sydney Australias history
Amazing video! I’ve been really trying to research how to get useful bike lanes in my city, so hearing about the people who control the roads in videos like this have been super helpful, and thank you for always exposing how terrible our transportation systems are! :)
This was a really important discussion. That said, it was more Rob Ford than I ever wanted to see again.
I was in Toronto for a week a couple months ago and the density of the street car network amazed me. I had anticipated taking the subway a lot more but I could very easy get anywhere else I wanted via street car from Kensington Market. I only had to really touch the subway to make short hops the street cars couldn't do or to charge my transit card.
13:55 missed a swear there, and i like it
"missed"
Having come back from my first trip to Toronto a few weeks ago this is going to be an interesting reflection on my time there
German here who lived in Guelph near Toronto for a while.
Whenever I visited Toronto I was happy I could take the extensive streetcar network to my destinations and I would mostly walk everywhere from High park to Cabbage Town (because "old Toronto" really isn't that big that you need a car). But the subway is a joke. Sure, it's great to get somewhere quick for a few stops, but I just wished for a better network.
Guelph by the way had a streetcar system back in the days. Unfortunately not anymore. Now you can take the bus to almost everywhere on ridiculously badly timed schedules.
In both cities the dependency on cars is obvious. In Toronto on the 401 it's incredibly dangerous and frightening. The big highway bridges through the middle of downtown create unnavigable obnoxious obstacles for pedestrians and also shady sketchy areas. But Guelph made me hate cars. I'm aware that people there are "progressive" and bike quite a lot compared to other cities, but it's ridiculous how car dependent the city design is. Malls, drive throughs, the Hanlon stroad cutting through the city. I'd love to see a video about Guelph on your channel.
I’ve been thinking about moving to Guelph as I live in rural Ontario and need to make a move to a more populated area. Did you like the city? Would it be better to move to Kitchener/Waterloo or Barrie? Would love to hear your insight
The SkyDome, a venue that has never changed its name, nor built gaudy statues to team owners
Thanks for the great videos!
BABE WAKE UP NEW NOT JUST BIKES VIDEO DROPPED
I live in Montreal. Very recently, I've been offered a very appealing job in Toronto. The lack of public transportation and car dependency is the top reason I'm still uncertain of my decision. I'm big and fat, yet, when I have to go downtown Mtl, in the summer, I hop on a Bixi Bike at the corner of my street and drive my bike 30 minutes down one of the many bikes lanes. In the winter, I take an express bus, also on the corner of my street, than take the metro. It's so easy here to move everywhere without a car... and that's what makes me hesitate to move to Toronto.
Great video! Do you think it would be possible to do a video similar to this one about Montreal? I’d be curious to hear your thoughts. It seems to me their metro line is well developed for North American standards, the new REM is very nice and the missing middle problem isn’t really present. There are disgusting roads like decarie boulevard for example.
NJB doesn't like to say positive things about North America 😅 but I agree that MTL is pretty great for NA standards anyway. It could be better, but there are some really great neighourhoods that are very walkable/bikeable and have good transit connections.
Most housing on the island is missing middle, which is great.
Man you just reminded me of the streetcars that used to run into my neighbor with a few loop around down weston rd and straight into my suburbs humber blvd
There used to be a street car route that ran all the way from Toronto to lake Simcoe on the Sutton side. My father has memories of riding it down to the hospital from Richmond Hill in the 50's before it was torn up. The idea that a street car ran that far is mind blowing now.
THANK YOU for calling it the Sky Dome!
I lived in a condo at Yonge and Fitch until 2017 and owned a car, it was the only way to live cuz I had to work in the suburbs and go to school in Scarborough. Now I’ve been in the Amsterdam for 5 years and never thought about owning a car, and the cost savings in terms of pure $ and time is immense
Congratulations on getting out!
You don't need a car if you live on Yongue & Finch. Not saying it's better than Amsterdam but you don't need a car
Dude, your sense of humour both cuts (pastrami Ford slices) and uplifts (people who dream to live in better cities.) Keep fighting the good fight!
This is a great video to watch right before I go insane on the 401/427 tomorrow
One time I was in a Toronto suburb and I was surprised by how difficult it is to walk to a Go Train station. I ended up bushwacking my way across some steep dirt hills and crossing the train tracks just outside of the station. Honestly absurd.
Well done video!!! ...very proud to be a torontonian!
Another TOP quality video. Back on this side of the Atlantic, I would love one of your next videos to look into how Brussels is slowly trying to get rid of its decades-long car dependency